A Sampling of Clips for January 4^th, 2010

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Building a Search Engine of the Brain, Slice by Slice
The New York Times, Dec. 21 -- Scientists huddled around what appeared to be a two-gallon carton of frozen yogurt, its exposed top swirling with dry-ice fumes. As the square container, fixed to a moving platform, inched toward a steel blade mounted level with its surface, the group held its collective breath. “Almost there,” someone said. Off came another layer, another, and another. And then there it was — a human brain. Not just any brain, either, but the one that had belonged to Henry Molaison, known worldwide as H. M., an amnesic who collaborated on hundreds of studies of memory and died last year at age 82. “You can see why everyone’s so nervous,” said Jacopo Annese, an assistant professor of radiology at UCSD. “I feel like the world is watching over my shoulder.” More

An Environmental Pioneer Surfs a Long Green Wave
Los Angeles Times, Dec. 27 -- He grew up partly on Midway Atoll, pop. 400, where sustainability was necessity. Last year, UCSD made him its first director of strategic energy initiatives. The gig: Since taking the job as UCSD’s first director of strategic energy initiatives in September 2008, Byron Washom has worked to turn the 1,200-acre campus into a model of sustainability, a "living laboratory." More

On Love: Psychologist-author Robert Epstein Says Love Isn't Accidental
Washington Post, Dec. 27 -- Robert Epstein believes that someday, in the not-too-distant future, many Americans will share his philosophy on relationships. And his philosophy is this: You can build love deliberately and choose whom to do it with. Epstein is a professor of psychology at UCSD and author whose previous research has focused largely on creativity and adolescence. He turned his attention to affairs of the heart after his first marriage ended in divorce. "It was personal," he says. "I've certainly failed in relationships and in very much the typical American way, which makes it very frustrating -- when you fail in a typical way." More

Similar story in San Francisco Chronicle

Ideal Beauty a Matter of Millimeters, Study Says
Today MSNBC, Jan. 4 -- For every woman who has ever obsessed that her chin was too long or that her eyes were set too close together, scientists appear to have a new message: You might be right. Researchers at UCSD claim they’ve discovered the ideal alignment of female facial features, a pair of measurements that explain why one woman is perceived as attractive and the other, well, isn’t. It all has to do with the horizontal distance between the eyes and the vertical distance between the eyes and the mouth, says Pamela M. Pallett, a researcher who believes she has identified new “golden ratios” for facial beauty. More

Vote: Which Do You Consider the Biggest '09 Trend in Behavior?
USA Today, Jan. 3 -- The full force of the recession brought stress to families and relationships in 2009, while new research found that our feelings of connectedness and loneliness are, in effect, contagious. Also in 2009, the personality trait of narcissism seemed to reach new levels. A look back at the big behavior and relationships stories of the year (Mentions studies by UCSD political scientist James Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis of Harvard’s Medical School) More

Intriguing People
CNN International, Dec. 21 -- Every weekday, CNN focuses on a handful of people in the news. This is a chance to find out more about what they've done -- good or bad -- what they've said or what they believe, and why we think they're intriguing. (Mentions Ricardo Dominguez associate professor of new media arts at UCSD, who created what he calls an act of civil disobedience: a "Transborder Immigrant Tool.") More

Similar story in US News and World Report

Good Riddance to Copenhagen
Newsweek, Dec. 18 -- That sound you'll hear in 2010 is a can being kicked down the road. Again. In the wake of the failure of the international negotiations in Copenhagen to reach a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, you'll hear a lot of talk about how the world has two good chances in the new year to achieve what it failed to do at Copenhagen. Don't believe it. (Quotes David Victor of UCSD's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies) More

Back Where We Started
Wall Street Journal, Dec. 21 -- America's politics have gone on a wild, full-circle ride over the past decade -- a journey that has left Americans just as divided as they were at the outset, but more cynical than before. Has America's political divide grown more polarized over the past decade? For a brief period after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it appeared the decade would turn out quite differently. In the wake of that searing national trauma, political divides were bridged, ideological differences faded, and a sense of genuine bipartisanship took hold. (Mentions analyses of congressional voting patterns by Keith Poole, a political scientist at UCSD) More

Stress Speeds Mental Decline in Impaired Elders
Reuters, Dec. 24 -- Chronic stress can speed up memory decline in older people who already have some impairment in their mental function, a new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry shows. But being stressed doesn't appear to affect memory in older people without such impairment, Dr. Guerry M. Peavy of UCSD and colleagues found. More

Can Nuclear Solve the Global Water Crisis?
UK Daily Telegraph, Dec. 20 -- As the global population expands, demand for water for agriculture and personal use will increase dramatically, but there could be a solution that will produce clean drinking water and help reduce carbon emissions as well. That process is nuclear desalination. Many areas of the world are suffering from a water crisis – and it's not just arid, developing countries that are suffering. The Western US is particularly vulnerable and its water crisis is getting more severe by the day. (Mentions UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography) More

Ms Hempel Chronicles by Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum
Guardian UK, Dec. 19 -- Amid the turmoil of early adolescence, teachers are one reliable constant: staid, disapproving, definitively adult. But “Ms Hempel Chronicles,” UCSD literature professor Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum’s neatly drawn tale of life in a New York middle school, turns the familiar rubric of schooldays on its head. Here, the focus of the awkward, uncertain process of growing up is the teacher herself. More

Is Happiness Linked to Quality-of-Life Factors Like Climate?
Yahoo! News, Dec. 17 -- The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself,” wrote Benjamin Franklin. Nearly half a century later Abraham Lincoln said, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Today, a report in the journal Science describes research carried out by the University of Warwick in Britain and Hamilton College in upstate New York that finds that internal happiness is more closely related to external conditions – such things as climate, air quality, and schools – than many have assumed. “The new study ... is clear, simple, and potentially quite important,” says Robert Epstein, visiting scholar at UCSD. More

Storm ‘Echoes’ Could Break Up Ice Shelves
Today MSNBC, Dec. 30 -- Slow tsunami-like waves are rolling into the waters off Antarctica. Generated by storms churning as near as the Patagonia coast and as far away as the Gulf of Alaska, these waves jostle the continent's giant floating ice shelves. According to a new study appearing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the rumbling may account for some of the decade's most dramatic ice breakups, which may only get worse as the planet's climate changes. (Quotes Peter Bromirski of UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography) More

Jobless MBAs Seek Solace in Support Groups
Yahoo! News, Dec. 24 -- Gillian Mager was in the midst of updating her MBA job club members on her networking efforts last June when she broke down in tears. Like most in the support group at UCSD’s Rady School of Management, her job search had extended beyond graduation and she spent her days sending out reams of resumes, often getting no response back. Making matters worse, she learned shortly before the meeting that a promising job opportunity she'd pinned her hopes on had fallen through. For the rest of the hourlong session, her business school classmates discussed what might have gone wrong during her job interview, critiqued her resume, and gave her ideas on what she could do differently next time. The group's encouragement and advice paid off; by August she landed a job as a marketing data analyst at Petco. More

Calamity in California State’s Battered Budget Leads
to Huge Fee Increases and Less Access to Public Universities
National Crosstalk, Dec. 30 -- Carved from the rust-colored Palomar Mountains along the coast of the churning Pacific, UCSD seems as close to paradise as any public higher education institution is likely to look. A racial and ethnic rainbow of students stroll beneath clear blue skies wearing T-shirts and flip-flops in the 80-degree heat. The student newspaper prints the surf report on page one. Butterflies flit around the eucalyptus trees while hundreds gather on a manicured athletics field for the Chancellor’s Challenge, a 5K road race. (Quotes Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and Utsav Gupta, UCSD student body president) More

Housing Picture Not All Gloomy
San Diego Union-Tribune, Jan. 3 -- For all the talk of the housing bust, San Diego County’s median price ended the decade up 48.4 percent from 2000. If in January 2000 you bought a home at the median price of $219,000 and went to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, you awoke at the end of 2009 to see your home worth $325,000. This means that many longtime homeowners are still sitting on big gains even after seeing the market skyrocket to a peak of $517,500 in November 2005 before plummeting. (Quotes James Hamilton, an economics professor at UCSD) More

Scripps at a Crossroads
San Diego Union-Tribune, Dec. 27 -- Renowned oceanographic institution faces major challenges as it tries to evolve and stay competitive amid budget crunch. Big dreamers and deep pockets built UCSD’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography into the powerhouse that it is today, and top scientists say those ingredients are needed for it to keep shining. The legacy started in the late 1800s with the vision of a San Diego physician fascinated by the ocean, followed by the largesse of the Scripps family. More

More UCSD Students Going into 'Green' Fields
Del Mar Times, Dec. 31 -- From energy economics and sustainable building designs to water conservation and biofuels made from algae, sharply higher numbers of UCSD undergraduates are opting for majors and minors, classes, internships and research projects that emphasize environmental sustainability. This year alone, the number of students minoring in environmental studies doubled to 60 and environmental engineering majors increased 50 percent to 92. In the eight years since the Division of Physical Sciences created the environmental systems major, enrollment has grown from a handful of students to more than 200 registered this fall. More

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